The ability to replace or repair deseased arteries, heart valves, venes or other soft tissues with bioprosthetic devices has provided surgeons with a method of treating valve deficiencies due to disease and congenital defects and other severe complications.
Typical procedures involve                the removal of the natural valve and surgical replacement with a bioprosthetic valve;        the removal of natural arteries or venes and surgical replacement with bioprosthetic arteries or venes;        the implantation of bioprosthetic shunts;        the remodeling of biological structures with vascularised matrices such as trachea using a decellularized intestinal matrix.        
Following implantation, there is a high risk of postoperative thrombosis, calcification or infection.
With respect to replacement of biological structures by bioprosthetic grafts, care must be taken to ensure confluent coverage of the surface with endothelial cells. For example, to achieve an endothelial cell layer on the heart valve, decellularized biological heart valves are cultivated with endothelial cells in bioreactors. These techniques, however, are complicated, time consuming and susceptible to contamination and therefore have limited effectiveness.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,192,312 discloses an allograft or xenograft treated with a growth factor (bFGF) and incubated with cells (fibroblasts) that migrate and proliferate in response to the growth factor. Although viability and longevity could be improved and degeneration of the implant could be decreased or slowed, allergic complications and adverse immune reaction could only be avoided with autogenous cells that are not always available.
It is therefore one object of the invention to provide a non- or reduced immunogenic bioartificial transplant readily available. Another object of the invention is to provide an implantable device or prosthesis that is more easily repopulated or remodeled in-vivo with endothelial cells of the recipient. Yet another object is to facilitate the use of xenografts and circumvent the low supply of homografts, especially for pediatric patients.